The Lobster

 

 

Sunk behind its dingy window

in a supermarket aquarium,

the lobster turns a muzzy eye

on the great élan of air.

 

Exposed to every scrutiny; it waits,

claws bound, an antenna snapped.

Not a crawl-space, nor a shadow.

Still as stone; invisible, it hopes.

 

It hopes a lobster’s coral hopes,

cramped upon a shallow shelf.

But its brains cannot conceive the sea

outside the lobster-shell. Desire, thus,

 

keeps slim to fit the narrow life within.

You will never hear the baffled lobster cry,

“What crime could be so great it moved the sea

to single-out a bloated shrimp like me?”

 

It’s a muffled clatter, this life that smudges by:

rattling cartloads of death perambulate past;

smutchy children nose and thump the glass;

vague eyes and teeth wink pearl hints

 

of what’s to come. This wispy world

suffused with light; a lobster’s carnival-

afterlife. Where each impression colours and brews

through nerve, and muscle, and sinew.

 

Where a thorny heat keeps life fired

to a reddening shriek. And God,

God boils it through.

 

To Needle the Earth

 

 

Its blossoms growing blind with anticipation, the tree

that’s been training, tying knots in its skin,

and from them flying a thousand little flags and kites

holds its sway over the ground. Nest-worthy and cradle-

 

sure, a hand to the bird, a loom to the spider, a toe-

hold to the lichen, a back-scratch to the bear,

a spiralling argument to the chipmunk and squirrel,

a wild and airborne botanical town. Whatever its lean,

 

in hush and in howl, the tree holds its poise.

To every claw-slash and talon-bite, the wood

responds with sweetness; but the sap that seals the score

and suckles a thousand stems will capture and kill a fly.

 

Before it unfurls forms more outrageous than a fine-

toothed green, the tree must channel a sapling’s enthusiasm

to twig, must run with the amber it finds in the rot, blossoms

stirred up from the syrup-song of its bark-lodged heart.

 

Berries swell and stop the flowers; gone is the flare,

and gone are the delicate powders. Nutshell, pinecone,

calabash and pith; the tree hatches its palate-baffling fruit,

and seeds to needle the earth to its works.